The Never Game

Everyone froze. A moment later Ashton took his hand off the knife. He muttered, “All right. No climb. For now. For now.” And walked to his study, lecturing an invisible audience. He closed the door behind him.

A burning silence ensued.

“He’s a stranger.” Dorion looked toward the study. Her eyes were as steady as her hands. The incident appeared to have affected her far less than it had her brothers.

Russell muttered, “He’s taught us how to survive. Now we have to survive him.”

It was two weeks later that Mary Dove awakened her middle child in the predawn hours.

Colter. Ash is missing. I need you...

Yes, Colter suspected Russell had killed their father. That was only circumstantial speculation. The hypothesis would move closer to theory, if not certainty, at their father’s funeral.

Mary Dove arranged for a modest ceremony three days after her husband’s death, attended by close family and colleagues from their former lives as academics at Berkeley.

Russell had flown back to L.A. after his mother returned from her sister’s hospital stay. He then returned to the Compound for the funeral. And it was when the family had gathered for breakfast before the memorial that Colter heard a brief exchange.

A relative asked Russell if he’d flown in from L.A. and he said no, he’d driven. And then he mentioned the route.

Colter actually gasped, a reaction nobody else heard. Because the route Russell had described had been closed recently because of a rockslide; it had been clear on the day of Ashton’s murder. This meant that Russell had been in the area for several days. He’d driven up earlier, hiding out nearby, maybe because his reclusive nature kept him from seeing family. Maybe to murder their father in the chill morning hours of October 5, for the purpose of saving his younger sister from any mad and dangerous “graduations.”

And for another reason too: to put his father out of his misery.

For food or hide, for defense, for mercy.

Colter resolved at the funeral to wait and confront his brother later. Later never came, because Russell had left abruptly after the service and then went off the grid entirely.

The thought of patricide haunted Colter for years, a constant wound to the soul. But then, a month ago, some hope emerged that perhaps his older brother might not have been the killer after all.

He was at his house in Florida, sorting through a box of old pictures his mother had sent. He found a letter addressed to Ashton with no return address. The postmark was Berkeley and the date three days before he died. This caught Shaw’s attention.

Ash:

I’m afraid I have to tell you Braxton is alive! Maybe headed north. Be CAREFUL. I’ve explained to everybody that inside the envelope is the key to where you’ve hidden everything.

I put it in 22-R, 3rd floor.

We’ll make this work, Ash. God bless.

— Eugene

What could he make of this?

One conclusion was that Ashton — indeed “everybody” in Eugene’s note — was at risk.

And who was Braxton?

First things first. Find Eugene. Colter’s mother said Ashton had a friend at Cal by that name, a fellow professor, but she couldn’t remember his last name. And she’d never heard of a Braxton.

Shaw’s search of staff at UC Berkeley fifteen years ago uncovered a professor Eugene Young, a physicist, who’d died, in a car crash, two years after Ashton had. The death itself seemed suspicious: driving off a cliff near Yosemite on a safe stretch of road. Shaw tracked down Young’s widow, who had remarried. Shaw had called her, explaining who he was and adding that he was compiling material about his father. Did she have anything — correspondence or other documents — relating to Ashton? She said she’d disposed of all her late husband’s personal documents over the years. Shaw gave her his number and told her he’d be in an RV park in Oakland for the next few days if she thought of anything.

Then Colter Shaw did what he was good at: tracking. Eugene Young was a professor on the Cal campus and he’d hidden something at a place designated as 22-R. It took Shaw two days to learn that only the Cal Sociology Department archives, located on the third floor, had a Room 22, with a stack R.

Which was where, three days ago, he found — and stole — the magic envelope.

Graded Exams 5/25...

If there was any proof that someone other than Russell Shaw had killed Ashton — this Braxton or possibly an associate — it would be that cryptic stack of documents the envelope contained.

Now, in Maddie’s bed, he heard Sheriff Roy Blanche’s words.

We’re calling it an accident. No other thing fits...